


burn in the wake of a world left behind

by victoriousscarf



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Fallout AU, Multi, Post-Nuclear War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 12:42:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19853413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victoriousscarf/pseuds/victoriousscarf
Summary: But then he woke up.Harry Potter woke up two hundred years in the future, in a broken mirror of his own world and he stood there, next to his house, facing down his own robotic helper and he had no idea where to go.





	burn in the wake of a world left behind

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since I realized that the sole survivor's plotline of waking up 200 years in the post-nuclear future is a GREAT storyline for "no idea about the wizarding world Harry Potter" this idea has been obsessing me so here we freaking go my friends. 
> 
> And if you're coming here for the Potter feels and don't know much about Fallout the quick and dirty is in an alternate 2077 everything was powered by nuclear power and tech was great but America was stuck in a weird sci-fi version of 1950s Americana forever and then nuclear war happened. 
> 
> It's gonna be fun guys. 
> 
> Title from Unsecret's "Fallout"

Harry Potter woke up.

He woke up gasping and flailing his arms out as he fell.

He woke up alone, surrounded by skeletons and with an alarm blaring up above as he landed on his hands and knees, coughing from the cryogenic freeze.

The morning had been so normal. Except for when he opened the door at the knock and found his cousin standing there, wearing a yellow hat and looking uncomfortable. “Dudley!” Harry had said, leaning an arm against the doorway. “Why cousin, it’s just been so long. However have you been? How’s the family?”

But Dudley just held his clipboard up higher, as if that would ever stop the force of Harry’s personality from reaching him. “I’m here today to talk to you about Vault-Tec—”

“Not even going to ask after Teddy?” Harry asked. “Or my husband?”

“Vault-Tec takes your safety very seriously,” Dudley said, not even looking at Harry. “And your—family’s safety is our top priority which is why we’re here today—”

“Really, Dudley, that’s how we’re going to play it?” Harry asked.

“Look, do you and your family want a spot in the Vault or not?” Dudley asked. “Nuclear war is a very serious concern here, and we are here for your protection in case of nuclear fallout.”

Harry paused for a second, looking over his shoulder at where his husband was playing with Teddy at the kitchen table, shooting him concerned looks every once and a while. “Yeah, sure,” Harry had said.

That had been in the morning.

Within hours the bombs had fallen and everyone fled from Sanctuary to the vault just above the hill, watching the plumes of the falling bombs land all around them as they ran. Harry didn’t even have much time to reflect on the sheer irony of it, because once they reached the elevator which brought them down below into the Vault, they weren’t allowed to stop running, because the Vault-Tec employees wanted them all to go through decontamination and they put them all into pods, claiming they would be within moments. There were rows and rows of the pods, branching off into separate rooms, and most of them were already full when the employee started shoving Harry into one, his husband and Teddy going into the one across from him.

It was standard procedure they said.

But now Harry was finally falling out of the pod and the entire Vault was dark, and the other pods were filled with skeletons.

He lay there on the ground, trying to get the world back under himself, gasping for air and trying to make sense of any of it.

He didn’t want to look up and see the skeletons of his life.

But when he did finally look up, his husband wasn’t a skeleton, even if he was dead, and there was no Teddy.

The sound of the alarms almost faded into the distance as Harry stared, too hurt to move.

But eventually he pushed himself to his feet, took a moment to say goodbye and he put one foot in front of the other, because that was all there was to do.

As he wandered through the Vault, trying to find the way out, he saw no one else alive. There were skeletons, long since dead, and bugs that had somehow grown ten times their regular size. Finally he found a computer terminal that still worked, finding notes from Vault-Tec that explained this Vault was going to freeze its inhabitants to see what happened.

“Cryogenic stasis,” he read. “Dudley, did you fucking know?”

He couldn’t tell which thought infuriated him more, that Dudley had known and perhaps had tried to sell him this spot as some revenge for a slight Harry didn’t even remember anymore, or that Dudley had been as duped by his employers as everyone else.

It didn’t really matter.

He pulled himself out of the Vault, step by step. Reaching the elevator, he could only hope it still worked and he wouldn’t be entombed down in the Earth forever. He hadn’t seen any food or other supplies on his way here.

For a long, heart stopping moment the elevator didn’t move before it finally started creaking, rattling its way back up to the surface.

Harry found himself standing on the elevator platform on the top of a hill overlooking his home, squinting in the light, and found a world he didn’t recognize.

The news had talked a lot about the dangers of nuclear war. After all, the year was 2077, and war with China and the USSR only looked more probable every day. But no one had really seemed to expect the world to end. Harry had finished school, and they had adopted Teddy after his parent’s died and sure, things were tense sometimes, but the world would continue, like it always did.

But now Harry was standing above a world that had been flattened, the clouds in the sky carrying a sickly greenish tint and more skeleton’s scattered around the elevator of those that did not make it in time to catch the last ride down.

Harry felt his knees give out and barely cared, sitting on the elevator and staring out over the desolate ruins of the town he had called home for most of his adult life.

His husband was dead, his adopted son was missing and presumably also dead, and his world was gone.

For a moment he considered just going back into the Vault and dying there, because at least he would be with the only family he had ever had.

But instead, he watched as the green clouds started spitting out flashes of lightning and decided some cover was better than nothing, and he started down the hill into the old ruins of the town.

Sanctuary apparently hadn’t much lived up to its name, based on the number of skeletons he passed, wading across the small river and jumping the fence in someone’s yard to reach the main road going through town. Cars were left where they had been, and they were rusty and missing pieces but they were still recognizable as cars, and the mailboxes were all still standing in front of their collapsing houses.

Harry looked up and down the street, the lightning inching closer when he decided he might as well take shelter from the storm in his own home. Turning left up the street he tried not to look at the other houses, or think about what probably happened to their inhabitants.

But when he finally reached his own house, he paused because the hedgerows still looked absolutely perfect.

He squinted, and looked over at the house across the street that was overgrown with weeds and spilled garbage and then back to his own perfect landscaping.

“How,” he started when another flash of lighting struck one of the houses nearby and he jumped just as a jangle sounded and a mechanic voice yelled, “Sir!”

“Colin?” he asked, as the floating utility robot appeared in the doorway. “Colin, you’re still alright?”

“Sir, I could say the same about you!” the robot exclaimed. “Why, it’s been two hundred years you’ve been late for dinner.”

Harry could only stare at him.

“Two hundred years?” he asked, ignoring the next flash of lightning as he stared at the only face he had seen since he woke up in a world that had far passed him. “It’s been—two hundred years?”

If possible, the floating arms of Colin seemed to drop. “I’m rather afraid so. I see—I see that—”

“He’s dead,” Harry cut off, not wanting to hear his name.

“And the boy?” Colin asked, voice dropping.

“I don’t know,” Harry whispered.

“Well,” and Colin waved his arms and floated closer, as if he wished he were human enough to hug Harry. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“Yeah,” Harry managed, still standing there next to the perfect hedgerows next to a house whose ceiling had fallen in and that morning he had kissed his husband and played with his son, and it had been a sunny day. That morning he had teased Dudley to cover the ever-shimmering rage at how his family had split themselves apart instead of figuring out a way to stay together. That morning, there was a whole life waiting for him.

But then he woke up.

Harry Potter woke up two hundred years in the future, in a broken mirror of his own world and he stood there, next to his house, facing down his own robotic helper and he had no idea where to go.

Harry Potter woke up.


End file.
